Sacred Madness
by Assimbya
Summary: Dionysus and Pentheus watch one another.


Pentheus watched the priest, who looked back at him with that unwavering smile, still as though his very face was a mask. He was shackled with the heaviest chains in the palace, long iron strands that fell in coils about his feet and should have tripped him to the floor if he attempted to take a step. But the priest's grace was not altered, and the shackles seemed to lie as lightly as lightly as bracelets upon his wrists. Pentheus' mouth twisted in a smile of revulsion as he imagined what Eastern decadence might enable the priest to bear shackles like jewelry, what debauchery this Dionysus' rites might consist of, with pleasure found in all things.

The thought of the young priest on his knees in the forest, his wrists tied with twine behind his back, his berry-red smiling lips parted with unwholesome pleasure, was one that Pentheus lingered on for an unexpectedly long time, and he had to examine the priest's face more closely to discern why this might be so. His cheeks were smooth as those of an _eromenos, _yes, his long, curling locks of hair dark and glossy. His dark, Asiatic eyes seemed constantly to be inviting, and his lips looked soft as a girl's.

Pentheus was abruptly conscious of how long his unmoving examination of the priest's face had taken, and it seemed to him that the priest's smile was even more mocking and condescending than previously, as though he could see Pentheus' reflections on his beauty.

He needed, in a deep visceral need that throbbed warmly within him, to break that smile from the priest's face. And so he took up the pinecone-headed _thyrsus _and broke it across his knee. It snapped easily, but the priest kept smiling. Pentheus forced a laugh from his own throat, but that sound, too, had no effect. "How does your god like that, I wonder, priest?" he hissed. On a whim, he took another step towards the priest and ripped the dappled fawn-skin from where it was pinned at his shoulder. The priest did not even flinch.

"You underestimate my god, to think his power held only in such little things." The priest's voice was calm, almost gentle, as though he was Pentheus' teacher.

"Let him show his power then! What good has he done you, to let me shackle you here? What kind of god is he, to leave his most faithful servant to play the martyr in his name?"

"He awaits the proper moment. He can be patient. His sacred madness afflicts all by the end, for none are without the desires that he alone can satisfy."

Pentheus scoffed. "Who has he afflicted? Weak willed women? Doddering old men already halfway along the path to madness? Little enough of a conquest."

"He can wait," the priest repeated, and then was still, his smile returning to its accustomed place as if upon a statue.

The rage built up in Pentheus' veins stronger than ever, and he would have hit the priest across the face to destroy his infernal beauty, his intolerable smile, but that he knew somehow that he could have cracked open the priest's face and the smile would still have remained. No, he needed other ways, surer ways, that would calm the fire in his blood and in his loins – twist a hand in those glossy curls, force him to his knees, his mouth open, his legs open, and then –

He had begun, caught up the long chains that held the priest, and twisted them to knock him from his feet, hitched up his own tunic, rough, hurried, unsensual, when he heard a word come from the priest's lips, as though from the wind – "_Hypocrite_."

The priest stood, the chains falling from his wrists and leaving only the shackles themselves, like heavy ceremonial bracelets, saying, in the cadence of ritual, "You will have no release, no pleasure until you accept my madness."

And he was gone.

-

Pentheus had never truly looked at his reflection. Mirrors were things for women, and while he may have seen a hint of his features in the curve of a polished shield, he had never known the full measure of his face.

He saw now, in the mirror of silver that the priest held for him, but even as he gazed, his features changed before his eyes. His beard was clipped close, and then shaved off. His cropped hair was covered with a wig that flowed down his back in a stream of golden tresses. The transformation fascinated him, as did the fact that his features could change so quickly, so soon after he had seen them the first time.

"Your skin is too sun-gilded for a well born maiden, my lord-lady," the priest said, speaking with the deference that he had acquired since this plan was begun, "you shall need oils to soften it, and powder to lighten it." He drew close to Pentheus, speaking in his ear, "Oils for your hair as well, to scent it before it is curled, and dark paints for your lips and eyelids." His hands reached down to the bottom of Pentheus' tunic, lifting it up, "This cloth is too rough, this cut not womanish." He pulled the tunic from Pentheus' body. Pentheus let him, remaining still even as the priest's hands slipped down over his thighs, soft as water. "Your legs are right, though, slim and pale. They will look beautiful when you dance with the Maenads, your chiton swirling up to show your ankles."

Pentheus let a small gasp of air escape his mouth at the image, though in his mind he danced with the young priest, feet swift and graceful, heads thrown back in wild ecstasy, a _thyrsus _pounding out the rhythm.

The softness of the priest's hands was gone from Pentheus' skin for a moment, but they soon returned, cool with scented oils, rhythmically massaging the oil into all of Pentheus' bare skin, beginning with his ankles and working up. When the priest reached his thighs, he gently pushed Pentheus down onto the nearby bed, and Pentheus let the mirror and his eyelids fall, succumbing to the blissful sensation of it.

"Open your eyes," the priest murmured, his mouth all but against Pentheus' skin, "look at me."

Pentheus did, and saw that the priest had changed in form somehow, though Pentheus could not have said how. There was a glow to him, indefinable but distinct, and he wore nothing but a leopard-skin nodded about his neck. There were vine leaves in his dark hair, as though they had grown there. He held a goblet of something. "Drink," he told Pentheus, and Pentheus, tilting back his vulnerable throat, did.

It was a heady drink, rich, sharp, the word intoxicating made substance, and Pentheus drank till the goblet was empty. The priest smiled. "Let me redden those lips," he said, and kissed Pentheus with his flower-soft mouth.

The priest tasted of the drink that he had given Pentheus, and he was stronger than Pentheus had anticipated, his soft hands firm on Pentheus' shoulders making Pentheus feel that it was he who was the _eromenos_, if this fit those understood, accustomed patterns at all, which Pentheus was not sure it did, not with the long wig on his own head and the priest's dark, slanted, mocking eyes…

The pleasure was like sharp starlight, and slippery moonlight, and just once, that once, he lost himself in it, forgot that he was Pentheus, King of Thebes, son of Agave, daughter of Cadmus, forgot what it meant to be a man, what responsibility that should have entailed, forgot logic and sunlight and duty and _arête._

And then it was over, the bed a mess as Pentheus would never have let it become if he had been in his right mind, the priest standing, the vine leaves gone from his hair, a normal chiton upon his body. He opened a trunk in the corner, took out a woman's chiton, long and gracefully draping, with elaborately patterned borders. "This will look beautiful on you," he said, his tone conversational and unhurried.

"Who are you?" Pentheus asked as he stood, fumbling, fixing the set of the wig on his head.

The priest smiled, like a serpent, like a god. "Dionysus," he said. "Come now and dress. We wouldn't want you to miss any of tonight."


End file.
